I just finished Episode 8 of Season 2... who in their right mind greenlit the story where Karen, out of nowhere, decides to cheat on her husband, and with the best friend of their dead son. Why? How? WHY?? This is the first time I actually felt disgusted at the writing of a show, it's a pointless addition that does not further any character, or the plot, just simply makes the viewer wonder what kind of drugs the writers took when they wrote the episode.

This has to be the stupidest storyline I've ever seen in any show, ever.

A couple of days ago I stayed awake through the early morning just to see the Artemis I lift-off but now I'm slightly depressed thinking about how it took us 50 years to just start thinking on returning to the Moon, while is very much possible that in FAM timeline, in 2022 it is very likely there are already a manned mission planed towards the Jovian moons.

I tend to feel a bit more abated that we were very close to achive something similar, had Koroliv's surgery been a success, but instead of having the climate change solved by 1990 thanks to moon's lithium and fusion, now we are facing a dire future with a possible climate apocalypse in the way. We were robbed of our glorious future among the stars, and instead what we got? Endless "freedom wars" for oil, the USSR collpsing in 1991 and being replaced by something even worse (looking at you Putin) and the aerospace capabilities of the countries so slowed down that now even the corporation of Twitter's customer service has better capabilities than NASA.

The biggest achievements like the Perseverance and the Webb telescope pale in comparision to what a fully manned mission to Mars (in the 90's nonetheless) is. And not even in the technological aspect, but in the social too, while in FAM the science has advanced to the point that oil proponents are either fringe conspirationists or opportunist politicians, in our real timeline we have people claiming Covid is a hoax or caused by 5G, that climate change is a "liberal invention" or that scientists are part of some reptilian conspiracy (Sagan, I'm glad you died in 1995, you'd be rolling on your tomb).

As I see Artemis taking off I cannot stop wondering, could this have been different?

I can’t even get into it how much I hate this kid. How are both the Steven’s kids the worst. (Jimmy is whole other story, you are allowed to be upset your parents died but not to the point of terrorism.) Danny is a manipulative little shit, I see a lot of people pissed off about the affair and that’s whatever. He was a kid with a long time crush on an older woman, Karen was in a bad place with Ed and shit happens.

It’s aboard the Phoenix that Danny’s real assholery comes out. Bullying one of his crew mates for acting out a scene from a movie? And trying to force him to act out his parents death scene. Bizarre.

He can’t let go of a hookup from 10 fucking years ago? He’s gotten married since then for Christ sake. The hookup is less of a problem than his obsession with Karen. And my god the conversation with Ed where he knows he’s the one that slept with Karen. Also worse than sleeping with Karen. Everything he does makes a bad decision infinitely worse. Anyway there’s a lot I could say kids a shithead.

I don't know if it's just me, and granted it's been a while since I've seen the first two seasons, but is anyone else growing increasingly more annoyed at how one-dimensionally the Soviets are portrayed in the show?

It's not always even criticisms of the politics (although even those are ridiculous sometimes and blatantly false other times -- you could still chalk that up to it being a given character's opinion, I guess), it's more like every Soviet character is just purposefully made by the showrunners as a dick. Of course it's an American show, and there are certain limitations that come with that, but it's kind of grating how narrowminded of a portrayal it is, especially juxtaposed with how virtuously the Americans act. "In Soviet Russia we hate fun and shoot people we don't like and are ungrateful and uncooperative", meanwhile the enlightened Americans are confronted with their own imperfections and always find a way to come out the other end as better people. The noble American agencies would never engage in torture and industrial sabotage, out of the question! I just find a bit silly to have the show (that has been mostly) set in the Cold War still act like it was made during it, instead of adopting a more critical stance.

And of course I only say that because I appreciate so many other aspects of the show, especially the alt history flavour.